GOLF HEAVEN, NO CADDY-CARTS ADMITTED

"Golf is a walking game. The walk between shots is not an interlude, non-golf. If it were, most of a round of golf would be non-golf and a great waste of time.

Having gone through a phase where it seemed to me only the shots mattered, I have returned to this much earlier notion: a round of golf is a brisk walking, a thread with little knots of activity along its length. Its essence is moving across a terrain on foot, connecting to it with senses and mind alert; evaluating, deciding, accepting outcomes, weighing up new situations. All the time, through these streams of mental and emotional activity, there is this walking, this seeing, the sensations of this body meeting the world. Take away the walking and something essential is gone."

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"I yearned for the cool air and stripped landscape of a Scottish golf course - any course, but preferably by a cool grey sea. I wanted to be moving briskly on foot, with a lightweight bag and set of clubs, in old trousers, a sweater and windcheater, with friends or alone, up an uneven faded yellow fairway lined with scraggy gorse, heather, whin. There would be no distance markers or refreshments stops. No electric carts, no bullish shouting, raucous laughter or screamed curses. No one would come by on another cart selling drinks or snacks of any kind. A chocolate bar, quickly shared round on the tee, or a snatched cigarette while friends holed out, that would be enough.

At this point my Scottish Presbyterian genes rise to the surface as I affirm golf is not a game of indulgence. It's not for swanning about on a cart, stuffing yourself with food, drink and figures, emoting your ego to the four winds. Golfing should be brisk, wry, simple and direct. You are there not to indulge, but to control yourself. To accept outcomes, not rail against them. To accept the role of approximation, instinct, guesswork and chance. Walk to the ball, pause, play it and walk on. Take it seriously but only as a game is taken seriously, as recreation, as an extended shaggy-dog story.

This is not war, gambling, business meeting or rocket science we're practising here. It isn't even Buddhism (though it could be regarded as a form of walking meditation). This is golf. That's all. That's enough."

ANDREW GREIG
An extract from "PREFERRED LIES - A Journey to the Heart of Golf